FROM MOUNTAIN MEDIA FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE DATED APRIL 21, 1999
THE LIBERTARIAN, By Vin Suprynowicz
Pining for the peaceful paradise of an omnipotent state
On April 20, the evening after armed culprits invaded a Colorado high school with pipe bombs and firearms in what police described as an "apparent suicide mission," an urban animal-rights activist, apparently having seen my defenses of the Second Amendment, sent me the following e-mail:
"I bet you must be very proud of those two militant freaks that murdered their fellow student and then took their own worthless lives. Hopefully you will be the next random victim of some loose cannon with an assault weapon.
"May God have mercy on your misguided soul."
I replied:
# # #
Greetings, whoever you are --
In Israel, teachers and parents who serve as school aides go armed at all times on school grounds, with semi-automatic weapons. Since this policy was put into effect, terrorist attacks in Israeli schools have dropped to zero. The only recent exception was the tragic case of a group of school- children who were murdered by an Arab gunman as they visited the "Zone of Peace" on the Jordanian border. The Jordanians specifically requested that the Israeli teachers and chaperones leave their weapons behind ... which they did.
American schools are, on the other hand, "gun free zones" by order of our chief cowards and socialist bed-wetters, Bill and Hillary Clinton, and Charles Schumer and Diane Feinstein. Therefore, our schools make ideal targets for misguided gunmen, who already violate dozens of laws when they undertake such actions -- demonstrating that no number of victim disarmament laws will ever stop such creatures. (Washington, D.C. should be a peaceful paradise if "gun control" laws work. But instead that city has one of our highest murder rates -- isn't that curious?)
I, too, hope the next time some nut takes it into his head to shoot an innocent child, he encounters me first. One of two things will then happen:
1) I will die, instead of an innocent child. Good trade; or
2) Being well-armed and trained in the use of the weapons which our Founding Fathers considered it our right "and duty" to own and carry (in order to protect their legacy of freedom against inevitable creeping tyranny) I will down the outlaw. An even better trade.
If someone attacks a helpless child while you're nearby, will you have the weapon and the training to stop them? (You'll dial 9-1-1, won't you? Average waiting time in Los Angeles today after dialing 9-1-1 is 20 minutes.) If the attack occurs in a school, will the nearby adults be helpless to save that child's life, due to victim disarmament laws you've supported?
In either case, are you sure God will have mercy on your soul, after you have knowingly betrayed our heritage of freedom, condemning the innocent to die without defense?
Unlike you, I do not hope you die because of your misguided faith in an armed, omnipotent state -- the same foolhardy faith that led many well-meaning Jews, Slavs, and Gypsies to stand by and watch their children gassed to death in Europe in the 1940s because they had foolishly "obeyed the law" and turned in their weapons, leaving only the army and the police with arms, while decent men had no recourse but to pray "that the Americans come with their Garand rifles in time to save us."
Quite to the contrary, as a member of the unorganized militia (as are all adult, able-bodied Americans), I would still use my weapons to defend your rights, your property, and the safety of your family, even after you have condemned me, vilified me, and voted to strip me of my God-given right to self-defense.
This does not make me a great man. It merely makes me a man.
What your opposite stance makes you, I'm not sure. Do I take it you oppose the existence or use of all firearms? Do you then believe our fathers, uncles, and grandfathers were wrong to hit those beaches in Normandy and Iwo Jima (yes, the names of some of my relatives are on the granite memorials), carrying these bullet-spewing machines which you hate? You would have preferred to leave things as they were in 1943, with millions condemned to fascist slavery?
And what about today in Littleton, Colorado? Would you have condemned the police to enter that building without firearms? Or do you actually believe that firearms are fine, so long as they're only in the possession of government agents ... as was the case under Stalin in 1931, under Hitler in 1942, under Mao in 1955, under Pol Pot in 1971? My, you must be very proud of "those militant freaks" who put "your" doctrines into effect, murdering 10 million in the Ukraine, 8 million in Germany and the Nazi empire, more millions in China, and (the piker!) a mere few hundred thousand in Cambodia.
Continue on your present course. You seem to be in the majority. So, with luck, you may yet survive -- at least briefly -- to live under just such a regime, yourself.
*** Vin Suprynowicz, vin@lvrj.com The evils of tyranny are rarely seen but by him who resists it. John Hay, 1872